TESCO'S Heswall and Bidston stores are considering a pioneering move to ban shoppers who park in disabled car spaces.

Both superstores have been earmarked to be among the first in the country for an aggressive psychological campaign by the retail giant to shame motorists who abuse disabled driver and parent-andtoddler parking spots.

Under the scheme, all special parking spaces will be very conspicuously painted and marked across their whole area. Disabled ones will be orange and blue while parent-and-toddler spaces will be painted lilac and white.

The plan is to shame the offenders, and drivers who park there will be issued a ticket warning them not to do it again.

The company is also considering allowing stores to ban persistent offenders.

And if the scheme is a success, supermarket bosses plan to extend it to cover the rest of Merseyside.

Wayne Padian, Tesco's customer services project manager, said: "Anybody parking there who shouldn't be will be extremely visible to everyone around them. They will have to be entirely shameless to abuse these spaces.

"The guilty people are all fit and well, but out to save themselves a walk of 20 yards, and they cause a lot of grief to customers who need these spaces.

"And other customers hate seeing old people or pregnant mothers with children having to struggle across the car park while a fit shopper leaves their car in a special space.

"We need to shame them into stopping because too often asking them results in very serious unpleasantness."

Bosses at the Heswall store on Telegraph Road have already taken steps to address parking issues.

They have employe d an independent sub-contractor to over-see the car park.

Ken Edwards, Tesco Heswall's stock control manager, said: "We had the same problems as everyone else with people abusing parentandtoddler and disabled spaces.

"But in addition we had incidents of people parking at the store first thing in the morning, using public transport to go over to Liverpool to do their day's work, then returning to pick up their cars in the evening.

"We are also constantly plagued by people parking here for free and going into Heswall town centre to do their shopping. For those reasons we introduced a maximum two hour parking time."

Debbie Hogan, customer services manager at the giant 24-hour Bidston store, which has undergone massive refurbishment over the summer, said the store had designated more special spaces to counter problems.

She said: "We added an extra eight spaces and put them right in front of the store entrance so anyone parking there unfairly is conspicuous to other shoppers."

Tesco has been deluged by complaints with customers saying seeing other drivers abusing special spaces is what most angers them about going shopping anywhere. ..SUPL: